Champagne
by feelxinfinite
Summary: He roughly grabbed the mostly-empty bottle from Edward's hand. An auric gaze met his own. "There aren't any answers at the bottom. I promise." Pre-CoS. Non-Yaoi, Somewhat Brotherly!HeiEd.


Disclaimer: I'd gladly pay off the owners of FMA just to own it. I'd settle for just owning Edward though, as long as they threw in a free collar. Mmmmeow. (Obviously I've been looking at too much fanart.) And I don't own the song "Champagne".

Warnings: Some angst. Some liquor-induced reality. Some pre-alcoholism?

Summary: Alfons comes home after a long day of work. Edward stays home after a long life of disappointments. Inspired by the song "Champagne" by Sugarcult.

**Champagne**

It was a strange sort of humidity tonight, following a boiling day with nearly unbearable, thick, cool air. The moonlight seemed to stream in lines through the branches of every tree lining the sidewalks, and the settled fog created odd shadows, both in the air and on the ground. A resounding rumble echoed in the deserted streets.

_'Nnnn. Food.'_

Alfons Heidrich treaded quickly and quietly along the road leading home. His stomach growled, and he miserably grasped at it with one hand while the other stayed curled within the deep and warm confines of his pocket. Stumbling along the uneven path, tired, he tried hard to imagine the contents of his cupboards and the possible dinners waiting for him. It was starting to become a habit of his to come home well past dark, and as a result, well past dinnertime. Then again, it was a joyous sort of thing when he really thought about it. Leaving work late _did_ seem to correlate with the massive amount of breakthroughs they'd been experiencing lately, his dedication to the research pushing them further along than they ever thought they'd get in this short amount of time. Just the thought of leaving his research with the others when he _knew_ he was on the brink of some personal record filled his entire mind with discontent. Although, logic told him it was probably for the best.

Had he even had the strength to carry _all_ of that paperwork, a certain prodigious, scientifically-impassioned and very _odd_ blond would be waiting at home, that damned mind of his constantly testing itself without limit, and after a full day of work, Alfons didn't think he could handle answering all of Edward's questions. The very thought of it exhausted him.

The strangest thing about Edward Elric was that he was simultaneously a blessing, and an incredible pain in the ass to Alfons. Although the companionship left him feeling as comfortable as he had with his own brother, he didn't really understand _how_ an eighteen-year-old as gifted as Edward was capable of carrying _so much _baggage. He would deny it, Alfons was sure, but Edward seemed to name himself responsible for every natural disaster to occur at any given location on the planet.

Metaphorically speaking, anyway.

Not to mention that he was an absolute PIG to live with. God forbid, Alfons was too tired to clean up after Ed, their apartment would start to look as if a tornado had repeatedly beaten itself against the bookshelves, leaving loose papers, texts, and even the _bookends_ strewn about the main room. When Edward had an idea of some sort, he worked relentlessly to obtain all possible information, condemning any state of peace their apartment may have been in beforehand.

_'His messes are as massive as his short complex!' _Alfons snorted loudly at his own pun, before his face settled back into a grimace at the thought of the possible state of their apartment. He sighed deeply, letting the air rush out of his lungs, and then counted to three before inhaling again. Nervousness always seemed to have a terrible effect on his respiratory system. On second thought, _everything_ seemed to have a terrible effect on his respiratory system.

The apartment building was in sight now. As frustrated as he knew he would be if he found his home in tatters, he felt happy just to be heading home. The truth was, life was a lot more interesting with Edward Elric around.

-----

Twisting the doorknob, and bracing himself for the worst--

Alfons found their living room even more pristine than it had been when he had cleaned it earlier that week. The floors, the table, the bookshelf... All neat! There were no filthy dishes or mugs in sight, and was that vase actually _polished?!_

_'Be still, my beating heart!'_

Suddenly, he felt a boundless amount of affection for his roommate. He glanced around, and spotted who he was looking for on their living room couch.

Ed was sprawled languidly along the length of the couch, one arm bent above his head, his other arm, the prosthetic, loosely hanging over the edge of the couch, his fingers clasped around something that was mostly out of Alfons' view. His eyes were closed, and Alfons thought that maybe he was sleeping, but the moment he moved further into the room, Ed's tawny gaze touched the ceiling, his eyes half-lidded.

Alfons smiled warmly before addressing his friend. "Edward, did you actually _clean_ today? I'm impressed!" His playful barb went by unnoticed. "Ed?" No answer. Ed continued to give the ceiling a blank look. "Edward." Not even a twitch. Alfons began to feel an unsettling ache of concern in the pit of his stomach.

Then the unidentified object in Ed's hand reflected the dim lighting. A bottle. _'Oh...'_

Alfons experienced, perhaps for the first time in his life towards anybody who wasn't family, a stab of fraternal protectiveness bubble up from the depths of his heart. It almost surpassed the anger and the disappointment he felt in his friend. Almost.

He roughly grabbed the mostly-empty bottle from Edward's hand. An auric gaze met his own. "There aren't any answers at the bottom. I promise."

He took a moment to digest the sullen words, and found he wasn't sure if Ed was referring to the bottom of the bottle, or the rock bottom he seemed to have unwittingly crashed into. Either way, he wasn't getting any verbal sympathy from the young German.

"Drowning yourself in whiskey? Wait, don't tell me." He touched his chin in a thoughtful gesture, but echoed a phrase he'd heard many times from Edward himself, with a biting sarcasm that showed he was in no mood for his friend's self-pity tonight. Burning sapphire flashed a glare at the teen draped over their couch's moldy cushions. "You had a bad day."

"Try a _lifetime_ of bad days," Edward mumbled. Alfons noted that Ed's usually brilliant eyes were dull and unfocused.

Tilting his head back, he rolled his eyes skyward to stare blankly at the ceiling. _'Just breathe.'_ The pessimism certainly was something that he'd dealt with before. The attitude was familiar and frequent. The drinking? That part was new. "How exactly does the whiskey help the situation?"

"It's not whiskey. It's champagne."

Alfons frowned skeptically to himself before lifting the bottle up to his nose and sniffing deeply. The bitter stench of hard liquor made him choke.

"I'm celebrating." He lifted his left hand clumsily to pat his stomach, an accomplished and lazy grin spreading across his pale features. "I'm celebrating with a nice bottle of champagne."

Alfons stared disbelievingly at Ed, opening his mouth but saying nothing as his mind struggled to follow this drunken train of thought. "You're celebrating... the fact... that the house is clean?" He didn't have to wait long for the answer to his asinine question. Edward blinked his eyes as if to clear out the fog within his mind before raising his gaze to connect with Alfons'. The gold was slightly more focused now.

"I'm going home."

A parade of responses stomped around in front of Alfons' eyes, but he just couldn't seem to deem one of them appropriate enough and so settled for the neutral silence.

He knew what Edward meant by "home". "Home" was some place very far away from here, beyond some gate that broke the laws of physics and stole arms and legs from small children. "Home" was a country with bright green hillsides, bustling cities, and blue-clad armies that accepted twelve-year-olds into their ranks. "Home" was a parallel universe containing a place Edward had called... Amentrees? Amertsis? The name didn't matter. The way Edward sighed the name longingly was the only thing that had managed to break through the wall Alfons had built between imaginary worlds, and the _real_ world. To pay attention to _all_ of the many stories about a boy's misadventures with a brother in armor (or was it a brother _made_ from armor?), and _alchemy _was difficult to say the least. To pay attention to the way Edward argued the principles of alchemy versus the laws of, say, physics, with such intense conviction was just plain concerning. For a jaded genius, Edward was pretty misled about the difference between _science_ and _magic_. And Alfons was pretty sure that it didn't matter what you labeled it, alchemy wasn't real and nobody had yet clued Edward in on that little fact.

Before he realized he opened his mouth, Alfons tiredly stated, "This _is_ your home, Ed."

"S'not. This is _your_ home. _Your_ world." His voice lowered. "Your goddamn world." Edward shut his eyes and draped his arm over his face. "I just can't seem to leave no matter how hard I try." Lips furling into a grimace, he clenched one hand longingly, wanting the bottle back in his hand, wanting more alcohol in his system. To permanently anchor his existence. To belong to a somewhere, to an _anywhere_, because _damnit_ he was so afraid of losing what he had fought for, for so long, and that was just _existence_. Just _existence_, of all things. All of the journeys, all of the attempts to fix his mistakes, all he wanted was to start over, NOT to start a whole new mess to clean up, not to start a new life that belonged to some other Ed. No. It wasn't even the life of some other Ed, but just some small, _pathetic_ extension of some other Alphonse's life in some other world on the other side of that _fucking_ gate.

To live his life... To pay for his sins, and to _move on_... To see Alphonse _alive_, and _living_ life the way he deserved...

It was all over the moment he awoke on the other side of the gate, half-naked, cold, and utterly alone in a world he would never truly belong in.

"I hate it here, Alfonsss..." It came out as a low whine, slurred together by exhaustion and the crash of the alcohol's ebbing effect. "I'm going home."

Alfons took pity on his friend's mental state, and hummed agreeably before gently tugging at Edward's shoulders to sit him up. "Then, I guess... I'll miss you."

"Al..."

Alfons frowned at the name, recognizing it as Ed's brother's, and resenting the brothers for this identity crisis he had dealt with when Ed had first moved in with him. He never knew if Ed ever cared for him as anything other than Al's replacement, and it hurt him more than he would ever let on. But determined to distract the both of them, he pushed the thoughts aside and grasped desperately at his next course of action. He moved towards the kitchen determinedly. "Alright, Ed. Why don't we get some food into your system. That'll make you feel better. Get up, I'll whip something up for us. How about some sausage?"

"...I don't care. Sure."

"Do you want something to drink?"

Edward rearranged himself to cover the entire couch before rolling onto his side, back to the kitchen. "It doesn't matter."

"Water? Tea?"

"It won't matter."

"What won't matter?"

"What I drink."

Alfons stared at the back of Edward's head.

"I don't care." Edward sighed deeply, and Alfons knew that the boy wasn't really there with him anymore, but lost in his _own_ world. "It doesn't matter." The world with his brother, and all of the people that he loved and cared about. "It won't matter." That world he longed to belong to again.

"All I can taste is champagne."

Turning back around to fiddle with the cabinets, Alfons sighed miserably. _'Oh, Edward...' _

He set about to feed his catatonic friend and silently wondered at the state of his mind. Such brilliance wasted... It was too obscured by his imagination, and his questionable sanity. All that work in rocketry, probably just a waste. Once Edward realized that he would have to accept this place as his _home_, how long would it be before he gave up the science knowing that it wouldn't get him back to his 'world'?

He turned to regard the broken man (no, _boy_) on his sofa. What would Ed do without him? He thought about the paperwork and the experiments he would have to leave to the others tomorrow so he could stay in to nurse his friend's inevitable hangover. And of course, to pick up the pieces... He sighed softly, and turned back to the food.

"I guess it's just another day down the drain."


End file.
